


It's Hard to Find It When You Know It

by bordello_blues



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Ambiguous Arthur/Ariadne, Angst, Brief Eames/OMC, Dream Violence, Eames Centric, Jealousy, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:41:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bordello_blues/pseuds/bordello_blues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is full of regrets and memories. He traipses around the globe, pines and tries to let Arthur go. But nobody ever said that it would be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Hard to Find It When You Know It

**Author's Note:**

> This first part was written a long, long time ago and originally posted to the livejournal Arthur/Eames community. Then life happened, but part two is finally under way. :) The title is from Re: Stacks by Bon Iver.

The first time he sees them, Eames is in Paris. It’s a crisp day in early April and the cherry trees outside Notre Dame are in full bloom. There are artists and street vendors lined up along the river selling junk, haggling with tourists; cars, honking and squeezing past each other, drowning out the fountain in the center of the Place Saint-Michel and the conversation taking place a couple of tables over. Eames has a book in his hands – a dog-eared, paperback copy of Camus’ _L’Etranger_ – but he’s only pretending to read. He’s perfecting his art really. Stealthily observing the way the voluptuous, beautiful blonde next to him holds her espresso cup – cradling it in her palms as gingerly as if she were holding an injured bird – nostrils flaring as she drinks in the aroma of the fine, dark roast; the way the mustachioed, red-nosed Frenchman three tables over thoroughly wets his lips with the tip of his tongue before puffing on his cigar. All these minute mannerisms Eames catalogues away for later use, plumping out the characters he keeps strictly organized in his mind.

His concentration, however, is broken when he sees them: Arthur and Ariadne arm in arm, Arthur’s head tilted slightly to the right as Ariadne says something over the noise of traffic. They are thirty feet away at most and coming closer with every passing second – Eames abruptly lifts his book up to eye level, wishing he could change his face outside of the dreamscape. Even surrounded by the crowd, they look so intimate; Arthur isn’t wearing a tie or cufflinks, just an argyle sweater vest over a white button down – his sleeves rolled up, the collar unbuttoned. Suddenly, Eames can feel his throat drying out. Still hiding behind his book he takes a large gulp of beer straight from the neck of the bottle, trying not to think about the delectable hollow between Arthur’s collarbones, the one he can clearly remember licking.

Eames tries to stifle the sudden surge of jealousy that twists at his gut; he squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, knowing that he’s being irrational. All that does is bring up unbidden memories of Arthur: above him, hair disheveled, eyes burning into his own with a wild intensity, fine trickles of sweat across Arthur’s forehead and his lips red and swollen as he digs to the very depths of Eames’ core; Arthur - pressed against the wall, face turned to the side, teeth digging into his lower lip and eyes closed in rapture.

His eyes snap open, wide, and Eames hisses in frustration; his gaze flits back to Arthur and Ariadne just in time to fall into her line of vision. And then he’s ducking under the table, fractions of a second before she does a double take and drags Arthur over. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur – Eames’ mind is reeling with envy and his heart (he thinks it’s his heart) is clenching with an emotion he’d rather not fathom. He’s angry with his own cowardice; his inability to trust or be trusted; his crippling fear of showing anybody the cockiness, the flirting, the nonchalance is only the layer of his personality closest to the surface. Eames knows he’s being absurd – they parted after the Fischer job on amicable terms, he and Arthur. Eames even hinted at Ariadne’s feelings, he is after all an expert at people, and the girl is anything _but_ subtle to anyone _but_ Arthur.

They’d done this before, on previous jobs; warmed each other’s beds through the cold nights in Moscow and London and Oslo or fucked through the balmy nights in Buenos Aires and Tangier and Manila. So why it’s any different now, Eames thinks, though they’ve never been exclusive and never anywhere near, god forbid, _official_. He realizes he’s still ducked down under the table and he peeks out in time to see Ariadne shake her head slightly. Eames feels like a peeping tom, invading their privacy even though now they’re walking away, across the Pont Saint-Michel and he really couldn’t help but notice them and anyway _he was here first_. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Arthur so relaxed. Undone, yes; debauched, definitely; spent, absolutely. But never that calm, no matter how he’d try to kiss the furrow from between his brows. And that, Eames realizes, tells him everything he needs to know.

Quickly, he waves over the waiter, pays his bill and leaves. The walk to his rented apartment is a short one, but it seems like an eternity before he’s finally shoving his key in the lock. He jerks off that night to images of Arthur; beautiful Arthur in all his different states: dressed to the nines, a labyrinth of sharp edges and crisp, clean lines; hunched over a desk in yet another warehouse, tie loose, sleeves rolled up, the furrow between his eyebrows deeper than ever, the pen clamped between his teeth; soaking wet after a kick and fuming because his suit has been ruined; but most of all on his knees in front of Arthur looking up at the sharp, smooth planes of his stomach, the bob of his Adam’s apple, his sleek muscles and pale skin. Eames comes with Arthur’s name on his lips – it’s almost a sob.

He wakes in the middle of the night to a beeping from his phone.

_Are you in Paris?_

It’s Arthur’s number. Eames never responds.

\--

It’s mid-June and Eames is in London, Hyde Park, to be exact. He likes the open space, the musky smell of the horses when he wanders near the stables, the clean, rain-washed look of the grass, but most of all the escape from his family home. As usual, it’s packed full of bodies: aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, siblings, the whole shebang. They seem to gravitate towards his mother, who happily folds their multitudes under her wings, wines and dines them, entertains; there are games for the children and gossip for the adults. Eames’ mother, she doesn’t approve of his lifestyle: her son shouldn’t wander the world, he shouldn’t risk his life for the thrill of it, he shouldn’t smoke or drink, he shouldn’t sleep with other men, and the list goes on; she’s never happy with him and Eames always leaves in an affectionate huff.

He thinks, sometimes, that he’s never going to come back here. Just leave one day and disappear, but his mother would be devastated. She may not agree with all his life choices, but he can see the proud way she smiles when she thinks he isn’t looking – at least he’s the best at what he does, and that’s the most she can ask for.

The grass is wet with the morning’s rain when he flops down on it, but Eames can’t bring himself to care. It’s London, and _fuck_ , he loves London, even if he spends most of his time running away from it. He stretches, and stares at the sky; basks in the warm rays of the sun that’s finally decided to deign him with its presence. Eames stares at the clouds and thinks of dreaming – real dreaming – without sedatives or needles in his wrist; he thinks that he maybe misses it, just a little. But then, the thoughts come unbidden. Images of Arthur sliding through his mind and Eames remembers that if it weren’t for dream-sharing; if it weren’t for a half-remembered offer on a field-op that launched him into the frankly burgeoning business, the two of them would never have met.

What a pity that would have been, Eames thinks. It’s been two months and he’s almost forgotten that moment in Paris, filed it away as a fluke. Arthur and Ariadne? They wouldn’t work; they wouldn’t mesh, not like Arthur does with Eames. He can see them being friends, maybe even spending a couple nights together. But anything else would be ludicrous, or perhaps Eames is just being delusional. There’s no denying the fact that he’d never seen Arthur so at ease, but he hopes against hope that the ease with which Arthur had carried himself was a residual effect of the inception job, of knowing he’s no longer tied to Cobb. Eames hates second-guessing himself; he hates doubting himself; most of all, though, he hates that he can’t simply let this go, as he should.

He dozes off amidst a flurry of thought, unbidden mental images and carefully catalogued moments. Eames thinks of the job in Edinburgh – gray, miserable Edinburgh – and Arthur on his doorstep soaked to the bone. The gel gone from his hair and his shirt clinging transparently to his shoulders, he tasted like sweat and salt and something unidentifiable. Eames remembers that Arthur has never liked the rain. There was a moment then when he thought he’d probably like to whisk Arthur off somewhere sunny and warm; no, not just warm, but sweltering: Cairo or Bangkok or New Orleans. Eames remembers that Arthur, just like himself, has always liked the heat.

There’s a hazy, whiskey fueled memory of the two of them in bed, after the Edinburgh job, sharing a cigarette in Eames’ Soho flat. Another, before that, of Arthur’s eyes, softer somehow, and calculating, in the grimy bathroom of the train; then the sting and the laughter as the train lurched and their foreheads collided. Earlier, even, as Eames is bleeding out of a shotgun wound to the gut; inside the dream the blood is too red and Arthur is holding him close, too close. Eames thinks he might vaguely recall the loaded die, tumbling, tumbling, landing inconsistently and Arthur shaking his head – relieved. It’s just a dream then, just another dream where one of them takes a hit, and for a second the fear is real.

He’s startled fully awake by the ghost of a touch on his face, but when he opens his eyes – a torturous shred of hope lodged in his throat – there’s nothing there. The wind is herding clouds across the sun and there’s a murmur of receding conversation echoing in his ears. Eames scrambles to stand, squints at the source, and refuses to believe what his eyes are telling him. The backs look too familiar and he’d recognize the cut of that suit anywhere, by sight, by touch, by smell, hell, even by taste. They’re holding hands and he can see Ariadne’s shoulders shaking in quiet laughter.

Eames decides to think he’s suffering from delusions brought on by being, apparently, a lovesick fool. He doesn’t like the word, tries to remember when the paradigm shifted, so to speak; but his mind is floundering and horribly blank. The PASIV sits on the table in front of him that night and Eames stares at it for hours.

He almost misses the text when it comes:

_You’re in London?_

It’s not even a question, Eames knows. By the time morning starts peeking through the windows, his nails are bitten down to the quick.

 

\--

Eames buys tickets to Mombasa and changes his mind at the last minute, decides on Buenos Aires. It’s August and it’s colder than he’d like. He finds their old hotel room, but it’s not the same. It smells different, of mothballs and musty sheets; or maybe it always smelled like this and he just didn’t notice because Arthur smells like mint, bergamot, a touch of spiced black pepper and cinnamon. Eames has even bought a bottle of Arthur’s cologne in an attempt to mimic that aroma, but it smells too much of patchouli on the pillows and not enough of sandalwood.

Outside the rain is pouring, but Eames has the Venetian blinds open and he’s sticking his head outside the window, catching raindrops on his tongue. Buenos Aires used to be his and his alone, but now he can’t walk outside without seeing traces of Arthur. In La Boca Eames sees the two of them at dinner, a slow moment on an easy job. There are dancers and an accordion player who must be in his late eighties; Arthur drags him out of the chair and they tango, clumsy with too much wine, in the street. Arthur was shaking with laughter the entire time, because Eames may have learned ballroom dancing, but he has always been better at the foxtrot than the tango, and to be fair he _is_ quite bad at it.

He walks to Puerto Madero and stares at the water, across the Reserva Ecológica. Eames had fled to Rio to lay low for a few days after the job, and when he came back Arthur was here, on a bench facing the bay, with a copy of Borges’ _Labyrinths_ in his hands. Unbidden, overwhelming _affection_ had welled up in Eames’ throat then and he’d spooked, rushed back to the hotel and checked out before he could get a handle on himself. He couldn’t look Arthur in the eyes over dinner that night, and when they fucked, slow and sweaty and sensual, in _Arthur’s_ room, Eames turned off the light and closed his eyes, tried not to think about this man that had somehow weaseled a way into his heart.

Arthur was gone the next morning. Eames trashed the hotel room and left as well, convincing himself that he wasn’t in love, not even a little bit. Now, it’s as if none of it happened, the television is just as old and works just as often, which is to say never at all. The dresser must have been replaced and the walls painted over because there are no gunshot holes to be seen. The windows are back in place and the paint on the frames is already cracking and peeling. He begins to doubt it’s the same room at all and maybe there’s one that still carries all the marks of Eames’ anger, maybe it still smells of mint and bergamot and pepper, and just the right amount of sandalwood. Wishful thinking, he realizes and slides his poker chip across his knuckles.

On Sunday, Eames stays in San Telmo and heads for the street markets. He loves the bustle and the pretty young things selling homemade _empanadas_ out of wicker baskets. Sometimes he’ll accidentally stumble across a treasure amongst all the junk peddled to the tourists. Today he finds an old leather Zippo case in a mountain of tchochkes, it needs a polish and a new flint, but it’s in pretty good shape for something that looks like it came out of the Second World War. It’s probably not that old, but Eames pays the forty pesos anyway, he can’t help thinking that Arthur would have been jealous; it’s just the kind of thing he’d like to own. The fact that Arthur only smokes around Eames, and thus doesn’t even _need_ a lighter, is a moot point.

He stops by a café on the way back to the hotel; orders _cortitos con leche_ , even though he hates it. The cigarette makes his mouth dry out, and the mixed flavors remind him of mornings at this same place. A small table on a sidewalk, _medialunas_ for the both of them, Eames never got to touch his; he always found Arthur’s sweet tooth uncharacteristic. He remembers kissing that mouth after, and it tasted exactly like his does right now: tobacco and coffee and a little tinge of sweetness at the edges.

There’s an antiquarian bookshop on the Avenida de Mayo that he visits next. Eames remembers Arthur’s hands dancing across the marbled covers, appraising the history books and the biographies, a glint of something almost manic in his eyes, like he’d wanted to buy the whole collection. Someone speaks to him in Spanish then and Eames unreadily snaps back to reality. The bookseller looks young and awkward, his suit is much too big and his tie knotted clumsily; he reminds Eames of Arthur when they first met, they were completely different people then: young and too soft, bright and idealistic and they didn’t know the first thing about living.

It came down to politics in the end, then, and when the program shut down those of them that weren’t dead and those of them that weren’t crazy were the ones ordered to give up dreaming, and the only ones who couldn’t do it. Afterwards they were older, exponentially so. Eames had lost none of his imagination, but all of the wide-eyed enthusiasm he’d come in with had morphed into a sullied cynicism. Arthur, on the other hand, he’d held on at first, but Eames remembers the day when something snapped. He thinks now that he’d seen it coming, back then, and suddenly Arthur wasn’t sweet or idealistic or easy anymore. Instead he was cut from diamonds: precise and calculating and sharp, so sharp that Eames could almost feel the edges slicing through his skin; complex beyond a degree even Eames could figure out, not for lack of trying.

It’s difficult to reconcile all the different facets of Arthur, the man’s as good an actor as he is and Eames just can’t quite put his finger on it. There’s Arthur dancing in the middle of a street and laughing, juxtaposed with Arthur’s gun at his temple and the threat clear on his face when Eames is on the verge of doing something incredibly stupid, juxtaposed with Arthur frantically rolling his die in the dream when Eames is taken down by a sniper’s headshot (this one he doesn’t see, but Cobb tells him about it much later). And the list goes on, Arthur is a paradox, and Eames, who _always_ believes in the impossible, is having trouble wrapping his mind around this one positively brilliant man.

It’s after dinner when Eames sees them, and he can’t say he’s surprised; it’s becoming something of a routine, Arthur and Ariadne, waiting for a tango performance outside a theatre. He almost makes eye contact, he almost can’t stop himself, but at the last possible moment, when Arthur must already be spying Eames in his peripherals, he glances away and shields his face.

He hooks up to the PASIV that night and builds the inside of the theatre. Eames recreates the memory of them: a small table, a candle, half a bottle of pisco gone and Arthur’s hand in his pants, stroking to the rhythm of the tango on stage.

He nearly throws the phone across the room when he wakes to find Arthur’s message:

_Was that you outside the Teatro Avenida?_

The next day he thinks about changing his phone number; instead he buys an apartment in Belgrano on a lark.

\--

In the end of September Eames agrees to a job that takes him to Murmansk. It’s barely more than five degrees Celsius and he hates it, but the job is easy, it pays well and it seems like a good time. Most importantly though, he knows that Arthur wouldn’t come this far north and since he hooked up to the PASIV back in Argentina to satisfy his fantasies, Eames is terrified that if he sees the point in person, it’ll be more than he can do to restrain himself. It’s become a tradition, he goes under almost every night and weaves new environments, or remembers old ones; sometimes he’ll forge Arthur and watch himself jerking off in a mirror, he knows every bit of his body well enough that the effect is almost perfect. But there’s always something missing, he knows Arthur too well to do him proper justice.

It’s over ice-cold vodka and wilted pickles at a ramshackle little bar that the point on the job, a thin, wiry Finn that sometimes goes by Niko, asks Eames what his problem is. Eames orders another round, downs his shot and thinks that he just might die, right then and there without any preamble.

“I think… I think I’m in love with Arthur,” he mumbles into the crook of his arm and flags down the barkeep for another shot, fast, it’s the first time he’s voiced the idea to anyone but his own subconscious. Niko lets out a low whistle and asks for a bottle of the strongest liquor they have.

“Well, shit,” Niko’s accent isn’t heavy, but it’s distinctly Finnish, and he only finishes when the bottle is in front of them, “Okay. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do: we will drink this bottle and you’re going to tell me how you’ve come to this conclusion and then we’ll see what we can do about it. Because, mate, I have to tell you, you’re in no state to pull a job, and I don’t want to put my ass on the line.”

Dejectedly, Eames nods, he takes three shots in quick succession and starts talking. At some point the bartender joins them, she’s a young slip of a thing with bright, vividly green eyes and short, messy blonde hair; he thinks he sees a little bit of what he used to be in her. Eames isn’t half way through his side of the story when she sets another bottle, a plate of cold salty herring, and a loaf of dark rye bread on the table in front of them. This may take hours, Eames realizes belatedly, but damn does it feel good to let everything out; even if it is to a stranger and a guy he’s only worked with on occasion. He tries to leave out the parts about what he actually does for a living and all the ways that Arthur makes him feel in bed, for the benefit of each party, respectively.

In the end, they’ve gone through two and a half bottles of vodka; Eames is drunk, which isn’t all that strange since he started drinking straight out of the neck after he got to the part about Arthur running off in Buenos Aires.

“You, my friend, are an idiot,” Niko says after a few moments pause, when it’s apparent that Eames has finished talking. He claps the forger on the back, grabs his parka and walks out into the freezing night.

“He’s right, you know,” the bartender says, though Eames is surprised that she even understood anything of what he was saying.

“Wh-,” _What does that even mean_ , Eames wants to ask, but she just interrupts him with a stern look that’s meant to say, “You’re supposed to figure it out on your own,” and informs him that the bar is now closing. Eames is left floundering and unsure of where to go from this point on, one thing _is_ certain, he does feel better, even if he knows the hangover tomorrow will be hell.

Two days later, there’s one moment on the job, when he’s sitting across from the mark and providing a distraction, wearing the shape of a voluptuous brunette he picked up in Barcelona, that he sees Arthur and Ariadne walking by outside the window of the restaurant. Eames’ smile turns toothy and forced and he almost slips out of the forge. The brunette blurs around the edges and tenses simultaneously, the restaurant goes quiet and the projections turn to look at him; but as he thumbs at his totem, everything slips back into place and the rest of the job goes off without a hitch. The extraction goes beyond well, all things considered, and Eames is in better spirits than he’s been in a while.

\--

The next time is in Venice in the dead of winter; when the city is empty of tourists and the acqua alta comes for an hour or so a day. Eames has always had a fascination with this city – no, a connection. Built on water, slowly drowning – he feels like that sometimes, like he’s slowly losing ground; recently, more than ever. He still hasn’t figured out whatever it is he has to find out _on his own_. When the melancholy hits, he goes to Venice, stays at the palazzo that his family owns, it’s always in January, when the city is misty and gray and surreal - the closest thing to the dreamscape without being hooked to a PASIV device. He’s been using less of his recently, it’s something about Arthur’s eyes in his fantasies driving him away, or that the last time they met in Eames’ subconscious, Arthur told him he was waiting. Waiting for what? What the hell does that even mean?

It’s been three weeks and Eames spends every day the same way. He wanders the streets, sometimes takes his boat out to Murano to watch the glass blowers, spends hours in the Piazza San Marco. On the weekends he brings breadcrumbs for the pigeons, every other day of the week Eames brings a book. He drinks coffee, which he hates, and wine and tea and grappa, which he doesn’t, sits outside in spite of the fact that it’s never more than ten degrees; he wears a thick, wool scarf and fingerless gloves, a Russian fur hat that he picked up in Murmansk pulled down over his ears. Eames chain smokes all day and reads Hemingway, or Dostoevsky, or Dickens. Most of all though, he thinks about Arthur and Ariadne, arm in arm, and Eames feels his heart shattering, knows now that it’s his heart.

It’s a Saturday, and he’s just dumped the last of the breadcrumbs; there’s a copy of _A Farewell to Arms_ on the table in front of him and his mood is as bleak as the novel. Eames sulks, which is strange in its own right, because he _never_ sulks – not visibly, at the very least. But there’s Frederic and Catherine, American and British, and the parallels are faint, yet just obvious enough to fix a scowl on his face as he takes a sip of his tea. That’s when he sees them, _again_ , and almost chokes in disbelief. Arthur and Ariadne, Ariadne and Arthur – not arm in arm this time, just side by side – but laughing. Eames can count the number of times he’s seen Arthur laugh like that on one hand, he thinks; conveniently forgetting all the other times that leave him short of fingers _and_ toes to count on. Hurriedly, he snatches up his book and hides behind it, wishing himself away from this place.

He thinks that maybe this is karma finally coming back to stab him in the back for all the hearts he’d broken, _inadvertently_. He’s just British and charming and never promising anything more than a half-hearted fling, because, Eames realizes this now - he’s been in love with Arthur for much, much longer than he could honestly fathom. It must be at least eight years now; he counts back in his head: one year ago was the Fischer job, they’d been sleeping together at least five or six years before that, two years before _that_ they had just run off from the army and they’d been there together for two years. Eames is thirty-four and he doesn’t believe in love at first sight, _but_ , he realizes, it’s a damn close thing. He thinks that perhaps he’s been in love with Arthur for _eleven_ years, and that is, quite honestly, ridiculous.

The text comes sooner rather than later that night and it says: _I know you’re in Venice, I saw you in the Piazza San Marco hiding behind a Hemingway._ As per usual, Eames doesn’t respond, but he notices it’s a little long-winded for Arthur and he thinks they should maybe divide up the world. Eames will get London, Venice, Bangkok, Mombasa and Buenos Aires, because they were his _long_ before Arthur ever stepped foot in any of them, maybe; as far as he cares, Arthur can get everything else. He goes out that night and plays the accent and the charm for all it’s worth.

There’s a sweet young thing in his bed that night. His name is Andreas and he bears an uncanny resemblance to the one person that is actually going through Eames’ head right now. Andreas, however, is too skinny and too young. He doesn’t have the star-shaped scar above his right hip where Arthur got shot at close range, there’s no knife scar across his abdominals from a nasty run-in with a hired gun in Berlin, he still has all the feeling in the nerves of his left leg, but most of all his eyes don’t speak of a life exponentially longer than it’s actually been. When Eames fucks Andreas, he flips him onto his stomach and closes his own eyes. Eames is pretty sure Arthur’s name is on his lips as he orgasms. When he wakes up there’s a note in Italian on the pillow that says, “Call me when you forget about ‘Arthur.’” There’s a hastily scrawled number, Eames throws it away immediately and almost, _almost_ , buys a new SIM card at the Vodafone across the canal. Instead he shutters the windows and buys the first ticket out of Venice that he can.

\--

In March it’s Phillipa’s birthday and Eames is in Los Angeles even though he knows Arthur will be there. He’s a week early for the party, staying in a damp, unpleasant apartment in Venice Beach until Cobb invites him to the guest room. Against his best judgment, Eames agrees; even though the memories are overwhelming, even though he thinks he can still smell Arthur in the pillows. They had stayed here numerous times before, in spite of the fact that both have houses in LA. Arthur spends much of his free time in Pasadena; Eames knows that the spare key is hidden underneath a planter overflowing with hydrangeas on the porch – he doesn’t dare use it. He has in fact put his old house on the market, an airy two-story in the Hollywood Hills that he can’t breath in anymore because Arthur is _everywhere_.

Eames realizes that he owns a lot of real estate, flats in each: Buenos Aires, Mombasa, London, Paris, Bangkok, New York (this one is more of a cupboard really), Barcelona, Cairo, Costa Rica and, inexplicably, Kiev; there are his family’s houses: London (again), Venice, St. Tropez, Chamonix, the Castle (in the English countryside, it is used mainly for storing antiques) and many, many more. None of them feels like home, though, or not as close to home as he feels in a hotel room; and definitely not as _home_ as he feels in any bed with Arthur between the sheets. He comes to LA though, and sleeps in Dom’s guest room, stares longingly at the PASIV for hours on end and tries (and fails) to talk as openly as he did about everything back in Murmansk.

Its two days before Phillipa’s birthday and Eames knows Arthur is arriving tomorrow, he knows he needs to breach the subject immediately. By noon, he is buzzed, at two he is well beyond tipsy, and by four he is ridiculously sloshed. At six he finally manages to sit down with Cobb without falling out of his chair, he starts to open his mouth to say something, _anything_.

“Eames,” Cobb interrupts the distinct lack of words, serious and amused and infuriating, “I hate to break it to you, but you’re an idiot.”

“You know,” it comes out more of a slur than anything else, “You’re the millionth person to say that to me recently.” Ten minutes later he is passed out in bed – Eames doesn’t dream.

The hangover is horrible in the morning, and yet Eames manages to get out of bed and somehow, miraculously, to avoid Arthur for the entire day. It definitely doesn’t involve sneaking out of the window and down the drainpipe, because that’s just undignified. It also doesn’t involve staking out the house until all the lights go off, the existence of a dozen donuts is purely hypothetical and not backed by sufficient evidence.

The next day is a flurry of activity; Eames runs errands just to get out, because he would feel guilty if he didn’t help. He knows though, that at some point he’s going to see Arthur – it’s unavoidable and he would really rather not. But Ariadne is in Paris because she’s working on a project and that, at least, eases the tension in Eames’ shoulders by a touch. When the moment finally comes, Eames first realizes this is the closest he’s been to Arthur since the inception job that got Cobb back here in the first place, and second, this was a very, _very_ bad idea. The conversation they make is stinted, due in no small part to the fact that Eames can’t seem to make his mouth work properly. All he wants to do is grab Arthur by the collar and drag him upstairs, trace his lips, his neck, his ribs and memorize all over again the smattering of scars across his body. Instead he makes balloon animals, which surprises everyone, and tries with little success to _not_ stare at Arthur’s back where he’s engaged in quiet conversation with Cobb. He looks up at one point, after handing James a balloon giraffe, to Arthur’s gaze on him. There’s something in his eyes that Eames can’t figure out; of course, it’s calculating and analytical, but that is typical Arthur and there’s something underneath that layer that is cryptic and a little poignant, and maybe even a little fond.

By the end of the party, Eames has _not_ called Arthur ‘pet’ or ‘darling’ or ‘love,’ he has instead called Arthur ‘pet…ard,’ and ‘Dar--th Vader’ and something that sounded suspiciously like, ‘love-oh-goddamit-here-I-go.’ Cobb is amused and Arthur seems perplexed; Eames, on the other hand, wants to shove his foot in his mouth, fall into a rather large hole that would ideally appear under his feet just about now, and disappear. He ends the night hooked to his PASIV, and he’s angry so there’s a multiple grenade launcher in his hands and he’s blowing up cars and buildings – it’s surprisingly good therapy. But then there’s a hand on his shoulder and _Arthur’s_ behind him and all of Eames’ frustration dissipates as if it never even existed.

“Eames,” the projection starts, “You’re being an idiot.”

Eames is flabbergasted, and all he can think to do is aim his Heckler & Koch compact at projection Arthur’s head.

“Et tu, Brute?” He asks as he pulls the trigger, it’s not a difficult thing for him to do. Perhaps, Eames thinks, he’s starting to go crazy. In the dream, he hotwires a motorcycle and rides, and rides, and rides, until the surroundings flicker between empty, rolling moors and scorched, cracked desert. He wrecks his motorcycle and wakes up just as the impact breaks his neck.

There’s a chair standing by his bed and an IV line draped over the arm of it; Eames curses, he doesn’t think he’s ever been this angry before or felt so violated. He _still_ doesn’t quite understand why everyone seems to thinks he’s an idiot, least of all Arthur himself. Given, Eames has been known to be impulsive and reckless, but he’s not _doing_ anything. In fact, he hasn’t taken a real job since Murmansk, preferring instead to traipse around the world avoiding Arthur, which never seems to work, anyway. And then, then it hits him, inspiration strikes and Eames is… Oh god, Eames is the biggest fool the world has ever known. He pulls out his phone to send a text message, types and retypes, erases, bites his nails down to the quick, pulls at his hair and beats his fist on the pillow.

He settles on: _im sry 4 shooting u in the hed thoght u were a projection_

Follows up with: _btw im pretty sur im in love with u_


End file.
